tisdag 25 november 2014

First impressions of the LG R Watch and Android Wear

I've now had my LG R Watch for about three weeks and have some impressions to share. This is not a complete review and I'm not going to go through the interface in detail as there are countless reviews and YouTube views that do just that. Rather, I'm focusing on peculiarities that caught my interest in some way, whether to impress or annoy me.

Introduction

This smartwatch uses Android Wear, Google's new operating system for embedded body-worn devices. It's a scaled down version of Android, the same operating system present in many of the world's smartphones and tablets. Unlike another recent smartwatch, it is not a completely autonomous device -- rather, it is paired with a phone (which itself must run a recent version of Android) over Bluetooth and relies on that phone to provide internet connectivity and to carry out most of the work. Think of Android Wear as a companion touchscreen on your wrist. I believe that Android Wear may become more autonomous over time. For example, Google recently added the possibility of storing and playing back music on the device itself, as well as support for the built-in GPS present in some smartwatches. (The LG R does not have a GPS, and I did not test stand-alone music playback.)

General Operation

Watchfaces

In normal operation the watch displays a standard watchface with the current time. The watch comes with several of these and it is also possible to download additional watchfaces from various sources, including Google Play. Unfortunately there is not yet a dedicated category available there for watchfaces, though there is a category for apps that have varying degrees of support for Android Wear.

Watchfaces come in very different forms. Some are analog, some are digital, and some display the weather, the watch battery, the phone battery, connection status, or other information.

The image to the right illustrates my favorite watchface right now (perhaps unlike most, I prefer digital watchfaces).


Idle Mode

When the watch is not in use the watchface will revert to a dimmed, simplified and often black-and-white version which consumes less battery. When you tap on the watchface or the watch detects arm movement, the normal watchface is restored. Sometimes merely moving your arm isn't sufficient to "wake it up" to normal mode. That is not a big problem on this watch in comparison to other recently introduced Android Wear watches that will actually turn off the entire display in idle mode in order to save battery. Some watchfaces allow the user to configure in great detail what the idle watchface will look like and how it will behave (for example, whether to display it in colour, or how long to wait before going to idle mode).

Apps appear to have the capability to request from the operating system to keep the display in the full-on mode which is great in the rare case that quick, constant access to controls is required. For example, the fantastic TinyCam Monitor app uses this feature to permanently display camera motion. I use this occasionally as a baby monitor (see image to the right). Another example is the impressive though less useful Wear Internet Browser which allows you to browse the web on the watch (it automatically retrieves the bookmarks from your phone's Chrome installation).

Equipment

Battery

Like other modern smartwatches, the LG R Watch in practice must be charged every night in its cradle, which is magnetically attached to the phone through metal pins (no wireless charging on this device). Depending on use, I usually have anywhere from 30 - 50 % of battery left when I go to bed. Some Android Wear watches reportedly won't even make it through the day, and that's with an Idle Mode that completely shuts the screen off. While I would like for the LG R Watch to last longer, in practice it is not a problem to charge the device on a nighly basis together with the phone itself. Nor, it could be argued, is it unreasonable for a modern, high-performant wearable computer to consume some amount of power.

Strap

The LG R Watch has a black leather strap that, after having getting used to it, I find very comfortable. It is supposed to be replacable with standard watch straps, as well.

Sound

The LG R Watch has a microphone to accept voice commands, but no speaker -- so you can't carry out a complete call on the watch alone. It will also vibrate when notifications come in, but the vibration is quite light and I do not always notice it.

Connection Management

As previously implied, the watch is not very useful without the phone connection given that notifications will not arrive. It does not keep time when shut off, but does retain time when temporarily disconnected from the watch. Occasionally it does not succeed in re-connecting to the phone automatically. When that happens I have to explicitly disconnect and then re-connect using the companion app on the phone. Luckily, disconnections are rare, as I keep the watch near my phone most of the time.

Pulse

The watch is able to measure pulse optically. This does not seem completely reliable -- it often fails to detect my pulse if I don't hold my arm completely still with the watch tightly secured to my wrist.

Interface

Unlike the full-blown Android for phones or tables, Android Wear does not allow for carriers or manufacturers to customize the experience in any significant way. While they look physically different, Android Wear devices all offer the same user experience.

Notification Cards

Any notification that appears on the smartphone (such as an incoming SMS) also shows up as a "card" in the lower portion of the watchface. Any card can display an enlarged version when selected. If any additional options are available for that card, those options can be reached by swiping to the left in successive steps. Sometimes the only available option is to open the notification on the phone. This is the case with any notification which has no built-in support for Android Wear. The Facebook app unfortunately is an example from this category. Other apps, such as Google Hangouts and the excellent new Google Messenger display a richer notification which allows multiple actions to be taken for an incoming SMS, including browsing chat history.

Notification cards like these can be swiped downwards away from the watchface in order to be reachable later, but then they stack up and make scrolling through notifications uncomfortable. If the card is swiped to the right, it is gone forever. For this reason it is difficult to browse through past SMS messages, for example -- you simply cannot recall the SMS history at will because there is no way to launch that card manually. In fact, there is no general notification history either.

Some cards show up automatically when specific apps are open on the phone. For example, whenever music is playing on the watch, a card shows up which can be used to control playback, volume, and skip between tracks. Similarly, when the camera is active, a remote shutter card becomes available. Speaking of the camera, the excellent PixtoCam app shows a live preview camera image on the watch while also offering more advanced camera control than the stock remote shutter card. Another great use-case is the Google Navigation card that shows up to display directions whenever Google Maps on my phone is in navigation mode.

Other Apps

In addition to simple notification cards (with possible additional option cards), apps also have the option of showing a more customized interface. Such apps can be reached by tapping on the watchface once, which launches a long menu of items. At the very bottom you can very tediously scroll to the Start option, which will open a new list of installed apps (again, excluding those which show only cards, as opposed to a more sophisticated interface). This interface also can be swiped to the right, which will return to the watchface mode. To get back to the app again, you have to tap again, scroll down, select Start and then re-select the app. This is a significant downside of the interface as it makes it very difficult to switch between apps and selecting the right information at the right time. Fortunately, there is a third party app that partially solves this by adding a global menu of apps that can be swiped in from the standard watchface. This app is not without a downside however, as it sometimes mistakenly believes that it should open when all you tried to do was swipe away a normal card.

App Management

The watch has no dedicated built-in app installer or uninstaller. Whenever an app is installed on the phone with support for Android Wear, that capability is automatically and instantly synced to the watch.


Layout Considerations

Android Wear watches come in different shapes, sizes and resolutions. Unfortunately, not all watchfaces or apps fit perfectly everywhere. I sometimes see cards showing up with text that are partially obscured in the corner -- even with official Google apps. This problem may eventually resolve itself when the rumoured watchface SDK becomes available, which I understand will offer ways to query detailed device and screen information.


Input

When the watch is fully awake, you can initiate a voice command by saying "OK Google" followed by any of the recognized commands. These commands appear to be more or less hard-coded, but in the Android Wear companion app on your phone you can select which app to launch for a specific voice command. Voice commands can be used to set alarms or response to SMS messages, for example. I have not tried this very much as only English is supported, and most of my day-to-day communication is in Swedish. It is regrettable that while the Android speech recognition engine itself has supported Swedish for the past year or so (as illustrated by the impressive Google Translate app), it still apparently cannot be used to issue any useful voice commands.

In my opinion, by far the most important omission from Android Wear is keyboard support. Although there are some interesting experiments, there is no universal way to input text into any app using an on-screen watch keyboard. This would be particularly useful in countries such as my own that lack voice support for the native language.

Stability

The LG R Watch is quite stable in my experience. Once or twice, an app has misbehaved, causing an alert to pop up directly on the watch offering to kill the process. However, my watch has twice frozen up completely while using a particular watchface, requiring a complete reboot and re-connect. It's sad that a watchface can make a modern operating system with a sophisticated (I would hope) sandbox to freeze up like that, although it has not happened to me with any other watchface thus far. In a third case, the watch actually entered into a temporary re-boot loop for some reason. When it came back up, I was able to reset it to factory defaults and it has not happened since. By far the majority of the time, my watch has run like a... clock!

Conclusion

Before the LG R Watch, I had a Pebble, and before that, I had the first and then the second generation of the Sony Smartwatch. The Sony watches frequently dropped the connection to the phone, causing them to even lose the time. The Pebble, my contrast, was stable and had decent notification support, but little in the way of extra features (although the crystal clear e-ink display lasted a week before requiring recharging).

Given my past history with smartwatches, I realized that I found basic notification support very useful to avoid picking up my phone needlessly or when busy with other matters. For anyone who thinks they too would like this capability, and some extras to boot, I whole-heartedly recommend the LG R Watch. However, like any other early adopter, you should be prepared to take part in an experiment which we have yet to see the end of. Android Wear as a platform still requires a lot of work to become truly convenient and reach its full potential.

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